SC will need to experience an exponential increase in progress if it's ever going to make good on its many and varied promises, but that doesn't mean it currently is. Unless the curve is becoming increasingly flat rather than steep, that is. More likely it will continue being a shallow, but more or less flat, line, which suddenly plateaus when Roberts decides it's "good enough" for MVP.
Star Citizen Thread v6
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SC will need to experience an exponential increase in progress if it's ever going to make good on its many and varied promises, but that doesn't mean it currently is. Unless the curve is becoming increasingly flat rather than steep, that is. More likely it will continue being a shallow, but more or less flat, line, which suddenly plateaus when Roberts decides it's "good enough" for MVP.
Are you sure that's right? Hellion is entirely players isn't it? But for SC 90% of the population is meant to be NPCs, all with their own daily routines and work schedules and more.
Similarly in ED we're meant to be vastly outnumbered by the NPCs and I've lost count of how many times people have fantasised about walking around ships to chat with passengers even to the stage of deep conversations with transported slaves and possibly quests from them and options to free them etc.
But SC takes it so much further to the point of running planetside farms and businesses and markets with NPC employees etc - SO much has been promised. If they were just offering an empty space with just players I'd be vastly more confident they could achieve it.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
not sure what you mean? I am sure of nothing, i was just countering 1500's observation that most people are expecting skyrim like gameplay, and i was saying i am hoping for more like hellion (albeit with AI rather than players as teh primary focus) - I also believe this is entirely achievable - tho i could be wrong
but I am not sure about anything..... esp regarding SC or ED.... but SC and ED have both talked about ship boarding, as well as wreck salvaging over the years, and going EVA to fix ships or possibly mining more "delicate" things on asteroids just seems a no brainer to me.
IF Hellion wasnt just players (and had VR) i would be off playing that game. Sadly it is, so my hope is SC / ED one day implement something similar but with the bits i like too.
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Well, if SC launches, it'll have 100% more features released than now. Ta da!
There's your features vs time "cliff". Some - myself included - thought that if SC ever launched and delivered on its promise, it'd jump right past ED. It still looks massively impressive, but by the time its promises are fulfilled it may be well under ED's line. But as it currently stands, it seems both games' trajectories have flattened quite a bit. I guess this stuff is hard!
I sometimes wondered if it would be possible to do a completely 'open' space simulator, where one company creates the universe and rules, but any other company can build/sell content (settlements, buildings, ships, surface vehicles, weapons, clothing etc.) for it. Every entity has a 'budget', so you can't build an invulnerable ship and sell it for 99c; if you boost its shields you compromise on its engines or weapons etc.; and they all have to obey the universe physics.
It seems creating a game world of this scale while also retaining enough detail and entropy to be interesting, is a mammoth task. (Who'd have thunk it?) ED went for the scale, and it slowly adding in the detail. SC went for the detail, and is slowly adding in the scale (and lots more detail). Both are still a long way off, IMO.
so ya, you are hoping for a style of gameplay that does not fit into ED current game. Because Hellion was designed for that from the start, ED was not. Also Hellion only has a few hours of gameplay (that you repeat over and over again to just stay alive, something that will not work in ED). It is also heavily focused on PVP. So you are hoping for shallow gameplay that does not fit within ED. Remember Hellion has very limited interiors, there is a reason most people stopped playing it and are just waiting for more content.
But EVA to do what? unless you put a ton of hours into making another game it will just be shallow. Look at SC, it has EVA and yet is crazy shallow. And Hellion mechanics do not work in the ED world. If we look at what is needed to get even the shallow gameplay of Hellion in, it is a massive undertaking. FD have to model all ship interiors, then they would have to change how they do ship repair, then they would have to add actual gameplay (something Hellion does not even have yet).
Exploring ships to what end? What do you do? So all that work for shallow walking around ships and looting? That is a lot of work for shallow gameplay. Fixing your own? So how does that work in the context of the current game?
And yes I think that, people would complain to high even if ED just added the gameplay currently in Hellion. People expect another game tacked on top of ED, something that stands as a solo game. Just look at what ED has currently with planets, it is more gameplay than Hellion and yet people complain all the time about how shallow it is.
CIG have been chasing that white whale for years and have failed time and time again.
Edit: I assume you have not read the reviews of the game. Many people are saying that it is not well done, and there is no gameplay.
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not sure what you mean? I am sure of nothing, i was just countering 1500's observation that most people are expecting skyrim like gameplay, and i was saying i am hoping for more like hellion (albeit with AI rather than players as teh primary focus) - I also believe this is entirely achievable - tho i could be wrong
but I am not sure about anything..... esp regarding SC or ED.... but SC and ED have both talked about ship boarding, as well as wreck salvaging over the years, and going EVA to fix ships or possibly mining more "delicate" things on asteroids just seems a no brainer to me.
IF Hellion wasnt just players (and had VR) i would be off playing that game. Sadly it is, so my hope is SC / ED one day implement something similar but with the bits i like too.
Right so you want ED to add FPS NPC's as well, something that Hellion will not have. Seems like you want a lot, fully flushed out gameplay on top of what ED already has. So I was right in what I was saying. So no countering from you.
Lets look at EVA in SC. Currently there is nothing to do. But what do they want to add. Ok CIG want you to EVA over and loot. So in other words you find a ship and you go over and fetch items back, shallow. Ok so you have to add gameplay then around it. Do you have to fight the ship first? Ok, then you have to add the ability to disable it, (keep in mind that ED already has the tools to loot ships from afar), then hold it still, then you go and do a fetching. Still shallow. Then what? Ok add FPS? now you have to add AI, and FPS guns, and combat. Now you are into some actual gameplay, but just look at all the things you had to add to give any meaning to EVA. And even then, unless the ships are large, that combat will get old fast. So even more work.
If we look at walking around worlds, you need a reason to do so. So quests that have you walk around, like skyrim. People keep asking for multiple games to get tacked into the same game, without any thought into how those mechanics will work together or how the Dev would have to put massive amounts of time into making content for those mechanics.
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"Behold, this enormous slab of marble. Slowly, over 10 years we will chip away to reveal our masterpiece, the David!"
"Behold, this pebble that we've sculpted into a flawless eyelash. Slowly,we will.. uhh.. somehow we've got to... hum, using new gluing techniques......FIDELITY!"
When developers start a new project without a solid plan, they also start a new project with a new plan some time later. You can't just cobble this stuff together, or it gets as buggy as a roach motel.
Here I am, just waiting for 3.0. Delays don't matter very much, I've got nothing invested but a little of my attention. Ship sales during the delays still turn my stomach but I've gotten used to it. I can't read about our lord and savior Chris Roberts without throwing up in my mouth a little but if he ever releases a game and it's plausibly fun, I'll buy it and play it just like NMS, Hellion, any other game that I went into with open eyes and reasonable, moderated hope. Honestly though, as more time goes on, comparisons to Elite and more and more unflattering to SC. Maybe they shouldn't be made in the first place going forward?
From a PM's point of view it more simple, budget, target, timeline. Keep adding to the target, you push the timeline, adding the budget, will at some point give you bottlenecks, (nine women and the baby thingy) so unless you drink the kool aid, they see it as it is pretty quickly.
This is what happens when you don't actually have a vision for your game and you just say yes to everyone in order to make money. Then you jump from one project to the other and back again. How many times has CIG said they are all focused on SQ42 then it was back to SC then back to SQ42. Paying other companies to make large sections of your game, but then don't bother to actually monitor their work or work with them. Then just have to throw all that work out.
Star Citizen are streaming a Q&A right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFuiIhtWs3w
BUT ... chat is disabled for this live stream .... I wonder why?
Not much of a Q&A/
That sounds like Roberts' dream solution. Imagine all the fun he would have, showing up every now and again in between his important Hollywood meetings to pass judgement on other people's content, like with that old "have the community design our spaceships for us" thing they used to do. Have other people do the work, and pay royalties or licensing fees or whatever to use CIG's revolutionary platform, and then blame them if (when) it sucks.
Yup, this is part of the fancy pants "subsumption" that CIG "invented". /s
I think this will be my "personal" ship.
I think this will be my "personal" ship.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3d/0a/e5/3d0ae53d94ef63621081035783e69fbb.png
Avenger is one of the few ship designs they have that I really like. My personal fav is Gladius (it suppose to be your main ship in SP part of the game from what I remember):
Looks kind of "old school" like something from the si fi 80s 90s movie.
Has a pretty decent weapon setup too from what I tested in free weekend.
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Ah, yes, Squadron 42. Which literally no one is working on because "The entire company is working feverishly to get you 3.0".
Well, technically speaking, there are lots of things that overlap between SQ42 and SC, so almost everything in 3.0 will be needed by SQ42 in some form or another to be released.
But if that quote is meant to be taken literally, then it probably means poor Erin's own plans and staff are being disrupted to assist with 3.0 features instead of working on what they presumably are meant to be working on (story, scripts, assets, etc for SQ42).
I'm convinced half the delay with 3.0 is shifting teams to work on Sqn 42 stuff...call it a hunch.
For anyone interested, tonight's town hall Q&A livestream. I found it strangely interesting, those VFX guys were pretty good. Someone asked why the Q&A wasn't live on Twitch...this was a subscribers only episode with questions coming only from subbies on Spectrum.
[video=youtube_share;hFuiIhtWs3w]https://youtu.be/hFuiIhtWs3w[/video]
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Absolutely agree, but then that sort of contradicts Roberts' other claim that Squadron 42 can be finished and released to pay for the development of SC.
Edit: On the other hand, I bet a lot of the "feverish" 3.0 development is being spent on dirty hacks and shortcuts just to get the increasingly delayed 3.0 albatross out the door, and probably won't contribute much at all to either game in the longer term.
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Too military for me to be a personal "General Purpose" ship. Just something to run about, haul cargo, and get familiar with people, groups, and the environment that isn't expensive to operate and fun to fly.
Cutlass black [yesnod]
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